receive the necessary waves that is all you want. Now, the retina of the eye with its optic nerve running to the brain is like the old form of telegraphy; the message runs along the wire to the receiver. That particular sort of current needs a wire. But the electric waves used in wireless telegraphy need no wire at all; they go direct to the station. In the same way, perhaps, can be explained the so-called telepathic powers of those gifted beings who can see what is happening in other places- perhaps on the other side of the world—clairvoyants, or what you will. Their brains are tuned to receive sight waves that need no optic nerves—waves that make no primary impression upon the retina of the eye at all, but are received direct by the brain itself. Do you understand?"
"I think so," I answered doubtfully. "You mean, if I see something in a dream, maybe it is my mind really seeing something that is actually going on somewhere else."
"Exactly—why not?"
I scratched my head in perplexity. You see, it sounded like tommyrot, and yet I had to admit the possibility of the thing.
"The explanation of all these things is, of course, that it isn't the eye that sees, but the brain. The eye merely receives the light in sight waves which are thrown off by all physical objects within the range of its vision, and transmits them to the brain. Light waves are motion waves, heat and light being merely forms of motion, as, of course, you know. The retina is so constructed that it can absorb these light waves and communicate the vibrations thus received to the brain. The brain does the seeing. Now, imagine a different sort of light wave, and there is no reason for supposing that the brain could not absorb it directly without the assistance of the retina."
"But you were talking about mental telepathy," I said. "This does not explain how you can read another's thoughts, even if it shows the theoretical possibility of seeing things with your eyes shut."
"For mind to communicate with mind, all you have to presuppose are mind waves," answered Migraine. "But the thing is perfectly well understood in science. It is a recognized fact. Do you want another cigar? Very good—wait."
Almost instantly the door opened and Saki entered bearing a tray of large, evenly-rolled Havanas, which he smilingly tendered to me. I must have made a botch of picking them off the tray, for Migraine began to laugh heartily, and I found myself holding half a dozen cigars in my fist and staring fixedly at Saki's scalp as he moved noiselessly away. The fellow did have patches of nice, black, shining hair mingled with the gray!
"Tell the gentleman your age, Saki!" directed Migraine. The Jap turned on his heel.
"One hunner an' ten," he said simply.
"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" I exclaimed to Migraine. "Do you expect me to believe him?"
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"It's nothing to me whether you believe him or not." he replied.
But I was piqued that a sensible, hard-headed man of business like myself could not put the kibosh on all this nonsense more readily. Down at the office they always come to me when they want, some one to spot the fallacy in any new theory of how to corner Union Pacific. So I thought hard for a moment. Then it came to me.
"Very well," I replied confidently. "If it's not the eye, but the brain, that sees, it must be the brain, and not the tongue. that tastes; not the fingers, but the brain, that feels; not the nose–"
"Precisely," said Migraine.
"Eh?" I shouted. "Then I suppose you will be telling me next that there is nothing to prevent my smelling an Indian bazar over in Calcutta somewhere, or feeling some fellow chopping wood over in Central Park, or–"
"You've got it!" he replied. "You've caught the idea!"
"Rats!" I remarked rather impolitely.
"Speaking of rats," he retorted. "have you never known a woman who could feel a cat in some other part of the house?"
I stared at him helplessly.
I dropped my head upon my shirt bosom. Why, of course I had!
"All that is pretty well understood—the 'projection of sensation.' The French—they have done a lot of it—call it the 'Exteriorization of Sensation.' We don't know much about it or what causes it, but we know that it is a scientific fact. I am going to take it up myself when I get the time. It's entirely different, of course, from telepathy, properly speaking, where one mind acts directly upon another."
I had been drinking a good deal, or I should have dropped to the doctor's little Wall Street game long before this; but now I saw it all in a flash. Telepathy! Of course. The good doctor merely waited until some financier was about to make a coup, and then, entirely unknown to the other, entered into the game as a silent partner with him. I cursed myself for never having thought. of the thing before and learning to do it myself.
"So, ho," I cried, winking at him. "That's how you do the trick, is it?"
"That's how I do the trick," he repeated without a smile.
"And it always works?"
"Always when it works with the other fellow. You see, if some other chap, whose mind I am not in contact with, comes along and puts a new element into the situation, why, I may get left along with the others. But, I play a safe game. I know one or two men with sympathetic minds"—he mentioned a couple of market leaders—"and when I see that one or the other of them is about to create a movement in a stock, and there seems likely to be no outside interference, I follow along."
I looked at him in amazement; he said it so simply. I was aghast at the possibilities of the thing.
"I don't see what is to prevent your getting hold of all the money in the world!" I exclaimed.
Migraine looked at me queerly, with an odd look in his blue eyes.
"What good would it do me? Would it teach me the mysteries of life and death? Would it help me to conquer age and disease? These things are not so much a question of money as of mind. We must have, to be sure, institutions like the Rockefeller Institute devoted to scientific research! And that requires money. But more than that we need Newtons, Darwins, Galileos! What avails a man if he gain the whole world and then miserably die? What pleasure does one have who knows that joy is inevitably followed by pain? I am constantly astounded at the stupidity of mankind. They strain and struggle and suffer to get a few more ounces of gold out of an exhausted mine—to make an overburdened soil continue to yield a livelihood. They distract their minds with business problems to earn a few more dollars. And all the while they scoff at science as pedantry!"
Somehow, he impressed me immensely, and I began to feel that I had made a mistake in spending all the best years of my life in buying and selling stocks for other people, when I might have been controlling human destiny and finding the hidden wealth of Monte Cristo by means of my own private mental divining rod. This mind-reading trick seemed easy enough. I wondered if Migraine would put me on to it. If he only would! My mind gloated over the thoughts of the untold riches which lay so easily within my grasp if I could only learn Migraine's secret.
"For example," and the doctor's voice interrupted my vision of gold, "think of the enormous attention devoted by mankind to inventing machinery, making telescopes, breeding race—horses, and that sort of thing, when an equal amount of effort might have made engines and telescopes and horses entirely useless. I mean exactly what I say. Look at the pains men have been to to breed fox terriers and bulldogs and bloodhounds. Have they ever once tried to breed a man? With all their optical science have they ever tried to develop the powers of the human eye? We have had Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven, and all the rest;
